OTT

It’s one of primetime’s biggest mysteries: Why does afterlife sitcom The Good Place keep getting renewed — despite dismal weekly ratings? NBC recently rewarded the series — starring Kristen Bell and Ted Danson — with a fourth season, a head-scratcher given that The Good Place averages less than 3 million viewers per week. The answer: streaming. The Good Place is actually one of NBC’s highest-rated shows, averaging around 10 million viewers each week once viewership from other platforms is factored in. That puts it on par with the network’s hit competition show The Voice, which averages between 8 and 10 million viewers each week.

One month after announcing her departure from ABC, Channing Dungey is heading to Netflix, where she will oversee the streaming service’s original content. Dungey will become the platform’s co-vice president of originals, a title she will share with Cindy Holland. In this role, Dungey will make strategic decisions about Netflix’s in-house content. She also will oversee a portion of the service’s overall deals, including contracts with such high-profile producers as Shonda Rhimes, Kenya Barris, the Obamas and Jenji Kohan, among others.

Many TV stations have been experimenting with packaging their local news for OTT consumption. So far the results are underwhelming. My best advice: keep at it, but lower expectations.

It is the first major local market streaming service from CBS and features local news content produced by WCBS and WLNY.

Associated Press writer Alicia Rancilio gives the top spot to the Amazon Prime hit. “From its costumes to the dialogue to the music to the quirky characters, this show is a delight. Watch it to feel good.”

Former DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson is joining Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s upstart Quibi. Sources say Nelson — who in June exited Warner Bros., where she also held the title of president of consumer products — will be head of operations at the shortform video venture that was launched earlier this year with $1 billion in investment from all the major film studios and Alibaba.

Middle-age Americans spend the most time consuming video, online content and other media, but younger adults are more likely to be digitally-focused using internet-connected TV devices, apps and the web, a new Nielsen survey finds.

ASU’s Frank Mungeam: TV stations “can have all kinds of great delivery, and the technology can get better, but it could expose the weakness of our underlying content. We have to start by working backwards from the audience, understanding what this new ecosystem is and the quality of some of the programming that we’re competing with on Netflix and Hulu.” (Photo: Jill Altmann)

The EVP and GM of CBS News Digital may have found an answer to the aging out of typical TV news viewers.  On average, users of its CBSN streaming service are 38 years old. Now the unit is turning its attention to delivering more local news with the rollout of CBSN Local later this month. (Photo: Jack Pagano)

Netflix just broke new records on consumer spending in its mobile apps, according to new data app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. In November, Netflix pulled in an estimated $86.6 million in worldwide consumer spending across its iOS and Android apps combined — a figure that’s 77% higher than the $49 million it generated last November. That’s a new record.

Kira Goldberg, the executive who worked on Twentieth Century Fox’s current hit, Bohemian Rhapsody, has been tapped to be a film executive at the digital streaming giant. Goldberg will report to Tendo Nagenda, the former Disney exec Netflix poached in August.

Quibi, the upcoming video service founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg and former HP CEO Meg Whitman, is getting two shows from Stephen Curry’s Unanimous Media as well as director Catherine Hardwicke. Katzenberg and Whitman announced the new projects at Variety’s Innovate summit in Los Angeles on Wednesday, where the duo also shared some additional details on the technology and roadmap of the service.

The new, free OTT streaming service will offer live and on-demand content spanning entertainment, sports and news when it launches early next year.

After a social media-driven frenzy, Netflix has confirmed that Friends will remain on the service throughout 2019, putting an end to fears the hit comedy from Warner Bros. TV would be leaving as of Jan. 1.

AT&T’s advertising unit, Xandr, will be at the center of its effort to transform the video advertising business. “Consumers clearly like the breadth of content that is available today. They like the choice. And a lot of that choice comes on the back of ad-supported models,” WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey said.

WarnerMedia’s nascent streaming service will launch in beta form by the end of 2019 with three tiers of programming options: an “entry-level” package focused on movies; a premium service with “original programming and blockbuster movies” and a third “that bundles content from the first two plus an extensive library of WarnerMedia and licensed content.”

For Amazon, a slate of regional sports networks would also serve as an added perk for subscribers of its Prime program, which costs $119 per year and has more than 100 million members worldwide. Prime membership in the U.S. is slowing down, but access to sports could be enough to draw in new members.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to know that in this age of streaming and on-demand viewing, linear TV notions of time and space don’t apply. But it did take a Breland — Sandy Breland, group vice president at Raycom Media — to apply that new reality to investigative reporting.

YouTube plans to make all future original programing available to users for free with advertising, as the video streaming unit of Alphabet Inc’s Google seeks a bigger audience for shows and movies that had mostly been restricted to paid subscribers. The shift in strategy means that starting in 2020, a YouTube Premium subscription will no longer be the only way to watch most original programs, with all users having some access.

Paramount and A24 agreeing to produce original films for the digital giants represents an about-face in the traditional pecking order and signals a major shift in the entertainment industry.